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New Transiting Extrasolar Planet
Shooter6947 writes "A new transiting extrasolar planet has been announced -- the only other known object that passes between its star and the Earth each orbit, a situation known as a transit, is HD209458b. The new planet, OGLE-TR-56b, is 0.9 times the mass of our own Jupiter and 1.3 times Jupiter's radius. It is the closest-in extrasolar planet yet found, with its year being only 1.2 days! Read about it from a cnn.com article or from the original scientific paper."
That's a 29-hour year. A 29-hour day isn't impressive in any way.
It's a gas giant. Colony ships wouldn't be useful even if it was at a livable temperature. Granted, overly large moons might be habitable for some gas giants, but we'd have to be able to find them first.
Molecular oxygen in an atmosphere implies life of some sort, as most non-biological processes reduce the amount of free oxygen. Once you've got evidence of life, you've crossed one of the major hurdles to finding intelligent life.
If you've got enough viewing ability to take spectral readings of individual planets in a system, you can make pretty good guesses about which ones have some sort of life on them.
If our alien astronomers have a technology level equivalent to ours roughly ten years ago or earlier, they're not going to see anything other than the Sun. If they're as advanced as we are, they might be able to see Jupiter, if they're close enough. If they're more advanced, then what they can tell about us depends on just how advanced they are.
But then again, I could be wrong.
The new planet, OGLE-TR-56b, is 0.9 times the mass of our own Jupiter and 1.3 times Jupiter's radius.
My favorite heavenly body is the girl who lives across the street. I've named her OGLE-T&A-36DD. The best thing is that I don't even need a telescope to see her: binoculars work fine for seeing into her bedroom!
GMD
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